Tools For Saving Savings

August 25, 2009|By Nicole Paitsel, npaitsel@dailypress.com 247-4737

Head to the grocery store on a double or triple coupon day, and coupons. Many of those shoppers use an envelope to store their money-saving coupons. But the real trick to saving money is organization. To help find the best coupon organization system, five local shoppers agreed to use a different coupon tool for one month before they reported their success or failure.

MARY GRIFFITH, 40, WILLIAMSBURG

Tool: [In]Place System. The file tote has a flat bottom and holds several unlabeled, 8 1/2-by-11-inch pocket folders. Griffith stored her grocery coupons by category, with one category per folder. ($19.99, Office Max).

Ratings (out of five, five being the best)

Size: *****

Ease of use: ***1/2

Quality: *****

Overall satisfaction: ****

Griffith says she would continue to use this product, though there were several design issues that prompted her to give the folder system a 3.5 ease of use rating. The flat bottom, for example, allowed the file to sit nicely in the seat of a grocery cart, but it tended to fall over if sitting on its own. It would also be convenient to include a pocket on the front of the file just for coupons you knew you would use that day, she says. An extra folder in the front of the file could be the remedy.

Griffith says she liked the pocket folder system because it made it easier to pull out coupons more spontaneously.

"I liked being able to pull out the individual folders, because I could get to coupons while I was in the store easier," she says.

The [In]Place System is also large enough to hold more than 200 coupons, she says.

JEANNE COATES, 43, YORKTOWN

Tool: The Couponizer, an 8-by-5 1/4-inch spiral-bound notebook with pocket folders already labeled and divided into categories. The booklet also includes a note pad and scissors. ($19.95, thecouponizer.com).

Ratings

Size: *

Ease of use: ****

Quality: *****

Overall satisfaction: **

Coates says she'll have to find another way to organize her coupons. The Couponizer is too large to fit in her purse, a must-have for her lifestyle. The plastic binding rings and the cardboard backing makes the booklet too unwieldy, she says.

She did like the fact that the organizer designated a folder for coupons to use that day, and that the materials seemed to be very durable.

BETH ELLIOTT, 38, HAMPTON

Tool: Koupon Keeper, a zip-up 3-ring binder with clear, plastic nine-pocket pages. This system is similar to one you would use to organize baseball cards. It also comes with scissors and a calculator and has built-in pockets for a notebook and pen. ($19.95, kouponkeeper.com).

Ratings

Size: *****

Ease of use: ****

Quality: *****

Overall satisfaction: ****

At first, Elliott says she thought the organizer was too big to use easily. But after some use, she found that it worked well in the front seat of a grocery cart. And she says she liked the idea of a system that separates the coupons into individual pockets, but it was too difficult to slide the coupons into the pockets.

"Only one coupon would fit in at a time, and many of them had to be folded over at least once, if not more," she says. "Getting the coupons to fit in the little slots took most of my time during the organization process."

Even with that design flaw, the extra pockets in the front of the binder for her military I.D., scissors, grocery list and pen won her over, and she says she'll continue to use the organizer for grocery shopping.

ALISON PHILLIPS, 30, YORK COUNTY

Tool: Coupon Keeper, an accordion file system that is a slightly larger than a stack of index cards. The Coupon Keeper also includes a note pad. ($8.95, theorganizedparent.com).

Ratings

Size: *****

Ease of use: ****

Quality: *** 1/2

Overall satisfaction: ****

Alison is the one in charge of grocery coupons in her husband-wife bargain-hunting team. For her, the small size of the organizer worked well because it could fit in her purse. She also liked the attached note pad, which allowed her to keep her grocery list and list of coupons together. The accordion system with its categorized stickers helped Alison stay organized, though she would have liked a tab that was just for the coupons she was going to use that day. To compensate, she would stick those coupons in her pants' pocket.

Alison says she'll continue using the Coupon Keeper, though she was a bit disappointed in the tool's quality.

"Just in the time I used it, I can see where the paper on the accordion folders is starting to wear away," she says. "And when the note pad is used up, I don't know if I'll be able to find a replacement that will fit."

Fred is the second half of the Phillips coupon team, and he is in charge of savings on technology and entertainment. For Fred, the plastic binder fit perfectly in his backpack (where he keeps his coupons and savings cards), and it was a good size for the printable coupons he finds on the Internet.

"Having my coupons organized this way made it easier to use the coupons, because I was more likely to have them with me," he says. "Instead of having that printable restaurant coupon still on the computer at home, I had it with me when we decided we wanted to use it."

He also says that having clear pocket folders made it easier to use the coupons, but it was not an efficient system for smaller grocery coupons.

"The small coupons tended to get lost in the bottom of the folders," he says.